Venus, Parker
by ForASecondThereWe'dWon
Summary: For a superhero, Peter falls into a lot of obvious traps. For someone who prefers to be alone, MJ really likes his company.


**Author's Note:**

Based on the Tumblr prompt: "We bet and you lost, so you have to do it."

Enjoy!

* * *

"I can't believe you didn't intervene," Peter hissed to Ned as they climbed the dune. "Some 'guy in the chair' you are."

"I didn't know he was going to make skinny-dipping the punishment!" his best friend argued back. "How was I supposed to guess that, Peter?"

"You were supposed to stop it from happening in the first place! You were supposed to make some kind of excuse on my behalf as soon as the words 'I bet Penis can't do a backflip' were out of his mouth! I can't let people know I'm good at that stuff! It would totally blow my cover! I had to throw it."

"If I can make a suggestion," Ned huffed as they neared the top, brushing through tall spikes of grass; the navy skyline widened. "You should work on not reacting to peer pressure. I didn't make you take the bait."

Peter sighed.

"I know, he just bugs me. I'm so sick of being called―"

"PENIS! PEEEEENIS! HURRY UP, YOU FUCKING TURTLE!" Flash yelled from the beach. The beam of his flashlight made looping patterns on the ground.

Exchanging a weary look, Peter and Ned crested the dune and took long, uneven strides down the other side, sand pouring into the sides of their shoes.

"Flash, come on, man," Peter tried as they approached his nemesis. "This is stupid. It wasn't a fair challenge. Nobody can do a backflip."

The other boy was unrelenting, grinning in the moonlight. Ugh. Peter just wanted to go back to the campground where the decathlon team was set up and have another s'more. Get into his pajamas. Maybe talk to MJ now that Mr. Harrington had hit the hay and quit supervising their every move.

"We bet and you lost," Flash reminded him mercilessly, "so you have to do it."

Peter glanced at the dark lake, slow waves licking the shore in a way that made him want to sleep rather than submerge his naked body into water that was going to feel a hell of a lot colder now that the sun had gone down.

"Don't wimp out, Penis."

The nickname startled Peter and he gave Flash a sharp look.

"You better not look."

"Oh please," Flash said, rolling his eyes. (Peter was a little bit insulted.) "I only have eyes for one man, and that's Spider-Man."

Ned failed to muffle his abrupt chuckle and his best friend glared at him.

"Sorry," Ned mouthed. Flash's well-known crush on Spider-Man was a touchy subject for Peter. Shockingly.

The three of them watched the water for a minute. The sound of it, washing in and out, was really peaceful. What a beautiful night to be utterly played by some jackass. Suddenly, there was the vibrating of a phone. It turned out to be Ned's.

"Betty's air mattress keeps deflating," he informed Peter, eyes on the screen. "She asked if I could come help her."

"Go ahead," Peter allowed with a half-hearted smile. "You don't need to stick around for this."

"You should be thankful I'm such a nice guy and didn't insist on an audience," Flash piped up.

Ned gave Peter a sympathetic look and traipsed back towards the dunes and the campground beyond. Flash, completely devoid of sympathy, clicked his flashlight off and on impatiently.

"Let's _goooo_," he complained.

Peter groaned.

"Fine, but turn around. I'll yell once I'm in the water."

"Sounds fair," Flash agreed.

Of course it was fair―it was the one part of this horrible misadventure that Peter'd had a say in. Wearily, he shed his clothes, dropped them in a heap on the sand, and sprinted for the water. He wasn't going to call back to Flash until he was submerged up to his neck.

* * *

MJ didn't know who was where―as far as she was concerned, being the team's captain for practices and tournaments didn't translate into being their babysitter for field trips and retreats―just that she was alone. And she liked it that way.

The campfire scene had been pretty mellow until Abe had decided to experiment with physical equilibrium by balancing their quartered logs of firewood, stacking them higher and higher, flames dancing upwards to engulf them. Yeah, that was a little too _Lord of the Flies_ for how MJ wanted her weekend to go, so she'd left the warnings and chastisement to Betty. (Ned had just shown up to potentially MacGyver her air mattress so the air would quit whistling out every time she laid down on it, leaving his girlfriend free to stop Abe from burning his eyebrows off.)

She'd wound through a thin barrier of trees to escape the glow of the fire and reach the valley of the path leading up between the dunes; now, MJ was scrambling upward, trying to keep her footing while also opening the new app she'd installed on her phone before they'd left the city. It was supposed to display the segment of sky currently over her position and map out which constellations should be visible to her. As she moved her phone around, the view would apparently shift, offering her information from horizon to horizon, in any direction. Camp was just too bright and too sheltered to give her the celestial panorama she craved.

Right when she lifted her gaze from her screen to check out the vantage from the top of the dune, a blinding light swung across her face.

"Oh my god, this is perfect, here."

It was Flash's voice, but MJ could only see pitch black. Asshole had completely wrecked her night vision. What was working was her sense of touch, tested when Flash shoved something against her stomach and she grasped it instinctively. He was already half-running, half-tripping past her, heading for their team's campsite while MJ attempted to figure out what she was holding. Soft… lumpy… something that felt like denim?

She stuffed her phone into her pocket (she wouldn't be able to see the screen until her eyes adjusted all over again) and staggered generally downwards, aiming for the soothing sounds of a beach post-nightfall.

After a considerable amount of blinking as she made every effort to improve her sight, MJ figured she was halfway across the beach, somewhere between dune and lake. She was sufficiently close to distinguish a dark shape in the water. Quickly, she brought the bundle she'd been carrying to arm's length and realized it was an entire set of clothes. Minus shoes, but MJ almost fell over one of those on her next step. Had Flash murdered someone out here and tricked her into finding the body? What a shithead.

"MJ?!"

She flushed like she'd been caught. She also jumped a little and something dropped limply onto her foot.

"Uh…" MJ called back to Peter, recognizing his voice and the pale circle of his face a little ways out in the water. "…hey, Parker. Why do I have your underwear?"

Stooping, she snatched up the item that had fallen and waved it over her head like a flag of surrender. She'd spoken before she was certain, but one of the pieces of clothing was definitely jeans and, out of the cottony things that remained, well, whatever she was flailing in the air was the only one with an elastic band.

She assumed Peter was crouching because the whole team had been swimming earlier in the day and found the drop-off was a good 100 yards out, but he confirmed it. With a sudden splash, he started to rise out of the water and head in her direction. He sunk back down just as abruptly and MJ smiled to herself at his embarrassed laugh, lowering her arm. Excellent, she realized she could see now―maybe not far enough to view Peter in detail but, obviously she wouldn't want that. Why would she want that? She wouldn't.

"I'm not sure," he called to her, "but I could guess. I _thought_ I left my clothes on the beach. Between that and you having them, well, that's gotta be Flash."

"That clears everything up," she replied wryly, tossing his clothes down with a plop and walking to the water's edge. Amusingly, Peter shrunk back a bit. "Let me recite that timeline back to you. First, you're down here with Flash. Second, you strip naked. Third, Flash blinds me and gives me your clothes. You're pretty smart, Peter. I think you'll agree that story leaves a few highly suspicious gaps."

He groans loudly and MJ grins.

"Flash tricked me into trying to do a backflip, I lost a bet when I couldn't, and he has _zero_ sense of human decency."

"But you can do a backflip." She was puzzled.

"What?"

"I've seen you do a backflip."

"You _have_? When?"

Woops. The perils of being very observant. It wasn't like she'd spied on Peter, she'd just forgotten something after decathlon practice a few weeks ago, gone back, and seen him flip off the stage in the auditorium. MJ didn't know his gymnastic talents were a secret, exactly, she just hadn't mentioned them to anyone because initiating conversations still wasn't second nature. If these abilities _were_ a secret, she wasn't protecting him on purpose. Definitely not.

"Uh, don't remember," she said, airily blowing him off. She frowned. "Aren't you cold out there?"

She saw him shrug.

"It's actually not that bad. I had my head under for a minute, which is probably when Flash booked it out of here with my clothes." MJ snickered and didn't reply. "Ok," Peter said after a few seconds, "well, I'll see you back at camp."

She stiffened.

"I'm not your personal courier."

"…What do you mean?"

"I mean I didn't come down here to deliver your clothes, loser. I'm not leaving yet."

"But I'm naked!" he yelped.

MJ's body was just trying to keep her warm without the external help of the campfire. That was all this sudden surge of heat was.

"You know, I did actually comprehend that when I had your boxers in my hand." She glanced sideways where she'd set his clothes. "You may want to shake them out before you put them back on, by the way, unless you enjoy sand in delicate places."

She could practically hear Peter's weary exhale, but something in MJ insisted that she not vacate the beach just because he told her to. This wasn't his private property and he had no authority over her. She wasn't his to… to… Heat flooded her again, face to feet. Yes, this was definitely just her irritation at being bossed around by Backflip Boy.

"When _are_ you leaving?" he tried.

"When I'm done."

His words sounded like resignation to her, so MJ began to relax again, the way she'd felt when she'd strolled out of camp on her own. That was weird. This calm was something she usually (always) experienced when totally alone. But Peter was here. Peter was here and he was lazily swimming closer, toes probably creeping along the sandy floor of the shallows.

"So… why'd you come out here?"

MJ started to explain, then paused to fish the phone that was her alibi out of the pocket of her jean shorts.

"Trying to see the stars better. There's too much light at camp."

"Oh yeah? Cool!" He propelled himself forward some more. At once, she was panicky, heart beating too fast. She concentrated on her phone, the screen mostly dark but for the points of light representing stars.

"I said 'stars' not 'Star Wars,' before you get too excited," MJ warned sarcastically, not looking up.

"My interest in space goes beyond the fictional."

She raised her head, readying a snarky reply that never came. Peter had his shoulders above the water now, arms out to the sides for balance. As she stared, he tipped his head back, rewetting his hair, then brought it up again. Her fingers went slack around her phone and she had to catch it with her other hand.

"What were you trying to see specifically?" he asked, wiping water away from his eyes as it ran down from his hair.

It was a struggle to compose herself, but she did it.

"Well, I sure wasn't looking for Uranus."

Peter huffed and stroked with his arms, sending him backwards several feet. MJ was laughing.

"Peter, don't. It was a joke. I can't see anything."

It took a long, careful stare before he drifted nearer again.

"I know," he eventually conceded. "I know you can't see anything. The dark, the distance, the distortion of the water…" She wanted to cough the word 'nerd,' but she restrained herself. "But I'm vulnerable here," Peter went on, gesturing at himself with both hands. "I can't _leave_."

"Do you want to?" MJ asked without thinking it over.

Peter met her eye.

"Do _you_?"

She swallowed and cocked her head stiffly, jerky with a fluttering anxiousness. It wasn't a dare, it wasn't a bet (yeah, Peter'd probably had enough of those for one night), and yet there was something about the way he'd said it―those two words.

Maintaining eye contact, MJ sat in the sand. This was her staying. She shuffled her feet out of her flip-flops and flicked them off to the side, then stretched her legs straight out until her heels were in the lake. Peter was also in the lake. Everything was fine. She inhaled with precision.

Oh fuck, she could see his bare chest.

Abruptly, MJ lost ground on the confident _who cares that you're nude below the waterline?_ thing, wimping out and turning her gaze decidedly downwards to her phone screen. She read the words 'Ursa Minor' a dozen times, but kept her back stiff like she was concentrating very hard, focusing on something desperately important.

It wasn't sustainable, this tense effort to ignore Peter. She couldn't do it at school when he was a dork in the marching band and she sure as hell couldn't do it when he was bare-ass naked in a lake. Being under the broad, dark sky was suddenly claustrophobic. MJ couldn't breathe. Her face was overly warm. She was going to be asphyxiated by her attraction to Peter. YES! FINE! She was _attracted_ to him!

"Ursa Minor," MJ mumbled to herself in the fanatical tone of a madwoman. She was Mrs. Rochester on a beach. Now _there_ was a woman who would've been entertained by a constellation-identifying app, stuck up in the attic all that time. God, MJ was spiralling. Brontё was her crazy place.

"I know some stuff," Peter said from the water.

She braced herself for the sight and, yep, there was his wet skin, just glistening away in the moonlight. How dare he.

"I could show you," he said.

MJ's mind totally fuzzed on what Peter might be wanting to show her. Lake Peter. After-dark Peter. Wet Peter. Her heart was bursting like a bagful of popcorn kernels, one eruption after the next.

"Constellations," he explained, as though she hadn't responded because he hadn't been clear, rather than because she'd gotten sidetracked wondering about his sexual savoir-faire.

"How are you going to show me? I won't be able to tell what you're pointing at."

"I could come out… but I'd wanna dry off before putting my clothes back on."

"Yeah, no," she said immediately. "There's a time limit on how long I can respectfully avert my eyes before I get bored standing there and decide to walk back to camp."

"You could come in," Peter replied quietly.

"In… the water." MJ shivered involuntarily.

"It's not that cold, right?"

He pointed at where her feet were partially submerged. She wanted to laugh if the water temperature was the reason he thought she'd shivered. Was Peter just going to pretend that the biggest issue with his suggestion was the possibility of her getting chilly?

"So you'll be a gentleman while I get undressed?"

Instantly, he flushed and gestured before his words could catch up. Only he didn't say what MJ expected him to.

"That's not very fair."

She gave him a stern look.

"Why not? Sure, I've been sitting here with your clothes, but I didn't watch you remove them. I didn't stare at your naked body! Not most of it," she added under her breath, seeing as she'd been eyeing him in the water all this time.

Peter glanced down quickly, grinning like he'd heard what she'd said.

"I'll turn around," he promised, glancing up with suspiciously trustworthy eyes.

"No."

"No?" he choked out.

"Just… cover your eyes," she requested, getting to her feet. "Then I'll be able to watch you and know you aren't somehow ogling my reflection."

"What if I peeked through my fingers?"

MJ laughed because she knew Peter Parker would do no such thing.

"Then your guilty expression would betray you the second you dropped your hands."

He chuckled to himself.

"Yeah, good point."

"So… cover 'em, Peter."

She saw his mouth fall open slightly.

"We're actually…"

"We're actually," MJ confirmed, grabbing the hem of her t-shirt. His eyes grew wider. "Chill. We're just two nerds talking about astronomy. It's not a big deal."

She began to draw her shirt up her stomach slowly, giving him plenty of warning, and he slapped his hands over his eyes, splashing himself with lake water. Pausing for nerves, MJ saw Peter shift to regain his balance after lifting his arms. The disturbance swished his wet cover to and fro and when it settled, she could see more of his chest. Plus all of his arms―raised as they were. Face hot, she wondered how long it would take to heat a beach by starlight, if they could put a hold on the sun. Because the night wouldn't last forever, MJ quickly yanked off her shirt and chucked it on top of Peter's clothes.

Her gaze slid intently from the heap to the boy in the water. He was diligently blocking her out, palms flat over his eyes and fingers stretched up his forehead into the front of his hair. Although she couldn't tell right now, MJ knew it would curl aggressively as it dried, like it had this afternoon after everyone went for a dip together. She thought about it, thought about him, and stared straight at him too as she unbuttoned her shorts and shimmied her legs to shake them down to the sand.

Peter's chest rose and fell as she watched, reacting to something. Must've been a ripple in the water, she figured. Something she couldn't see from here.

"You haven't asked," MJ noted, unclipping her bra. Pile.

"W-what should I ask?"

"If you can look yet. And I didn't say you _should_."

There was a pause, thick like wet sand.

"You're surprised I'm not more impatient? Do you want me to be?"

She'd need sunscreen to protect the rest of her exposed skin from the way her face seemed to be glowing, ready to sear. How he'd flipped her remark around on her… MJ hadn't expected it. Another question he'd put to her bluntly that sounded so innocent. But it wasn't, not really. This wasn't them sussing out who wanted the last hamburger and was too afraid to be rude. This was a more complicated politick of desire and it couldn't all be questions and evasions; eventually, there would need to be blunt answers for Peter's blunt questions.

"Just an observation," MJ muttered.

She removed her underwear carefully, keeping them away from the sand by lifting her feet high and maneuvering the leg holes swiftly and dexterously around her heels to preclude transfer. All she left on was the elastic in her hair.

"I'm… I'm coming into the water now."

"I can hear you."

Maybe her racing heart was drowning out the noise of her feet, because all MJ heard were tinkling slaps, then gentle swooshing as the lake greeted her ankles, her shins, the tender backs of her knees. Peter rotated towards her as she got closer, she noticed, still covering his eyes. Wading past him, MJ flicked water at his head―a couple feet away when her arm was stretched all the way out to the side. They both laughed. She didn't stop moving through the water until it came up just above her breasts when she was standing, wetting more of her skin as she sunk down.

Despite attempting to ease the tension (she felt it, he must be feeling it), MJ's heart was still banging hard enough that she expected to see ripples racing away from her on the surface of the water. She glanced back at the beach, then at Peter. The air was still and the rest of the world seemed peacefully distant, if not empty. She hopped from foot to foot on the sandy lakebed, swaying pleasantly in a way that belied how uncontrolled she felt on the inside, not just because of the weak current her motions were creating.

Peter dropped his hands and looked at her. MJ drew her arms instinctively inward, treading water in front of her chest.

"I thought you would wait until I said you could open your eyes," she told him, not actually upset.

"I figured you'd be… uh… covered by now." He gestured at her shoulders, peeking above the surface like the curved backs of baby geese. "You're tall, but you're not _that_ tall."

"You _figured_ or you knew? Am I supposed to believe that you hadn't already calculated the depth of the water compared to my height, and considered the distance from the beach? The length of my stride, maybe?"

"I just didn't want to show off." Peter shrugged, grinning a little. "Make you feel vulnerable."

"Oh, you mean like I did to you," MJ joked.

Incredible. All it took for them to have a non-abusive conversation was less light and fewer clothes. (No clothes.) There weren't a wealth of ways to replicate these conditions once they got home. There was one way―one very _specific_ way―but she had to remember her own excuse for their behaviour: they were just two nerds with a shared interest in astronomy. Every step they'd taken since she'd descended to the beach was motivated purely by logic.

Yeah, better not consider that intentional state of denial too closely.

"Let's start easy," Peter suggested.

He flowed towards her―smoother than walking on land, though he did that with a weird gracefulness too―and MJ's heart flipped end over end. She looked at his face too long after he'd extended his arm, pointing above them.

"The Little Dipper."

"Ursa Minor," she corrected. "Yeah, I've pretty much got that one down."

Peter appeared blue in this light. Blue and soft and dreamlike, like he was going to take her hand and fly her to Mermaid Lagoon. Wait, wrong Peter.

"Well… hmm."

His concentration shifted upward, high above the both of them. MJ's remained fixed on his face and the way the moon and the lake ruled its bright places and its shadows; noticing him across a classroom or from the other end of the lunch table wasn't the same as performing a close study of his profile from less than three feet away. The definition of his jaw was a surprise, with his head tilted back. It trapped a shadow beneath it, like a ledge. As MJ dragged her eyes slowly down, she tried to discern the exact spot at which that darkness dissolved into the light bouncing up off the water, making his throat pale and vampiric. Or maybe she was the vampire. She certainly wanted to bite down on his skin with her teeth.

MJ yanked the elastic from her hair and shook her head, trying to clear it. Unfortunately, it was as ineffective as shaking a snow globe and expecting to see through it more easily. She was hazy with Peter, who was pointing to Venus, checking to make sure MJ was staring at the correct dazzling speck.

"That one?" she asked, squinting although the light source was minute and far, far away. (_God_, she thought, _don't say that out loud. Not after you told Peter this wasn't about_ Star Wars.)

Peter angled his head in her direction, eyes still on the sky.

"No, the bright one." Absently, it looked like, he glanced from her to Venus, attempting to establish a guiding line he could point along. "Down a little… I think."

"You _think_?"

Honestly, MJ wasn't putting too much effort into finding anything. Her priorities had changed. There were so many fewer opportunities to be alone with Peter than there were stars visible from the state of New York.

"Just…"

Peter sighed and suddenly his hands came around from behind her, holding underneath her jaw like he was lifting a heavy chalice with both hands. Like the Holy Grail or something. His thumbs pressed to its hinge, his index fingers resting against her cheeks. He directed her manually, helping her find Venus. MJ was going to burn him. Her face was too hot.

"Do you see? Oh."

He must've snapped out of his science-daze and realized how he was touching her. How they never touched. They might've shaken hands once. (It was three times―she remembered.) Peter's fingers sprang away from her skin, jack-in-the-box quick, but MJ grabbed his hands.

"I see," she said, turning weightlessly in the water. The wet ends of her hair stroked her back.

She let go of one of Peter's hands and, miraculously, it landed on the back of her neck. The pads of his fingers were pruney. The other hand MJ kept, her arm crossing her body to maintain contact.

"It _is_ a big deal," he told her. She vaguely recalled stating the opposite, lying. "It is."

Cautious, MJ leaned her upper body closer, led by her lips. Her gaze went from Peter's mouth to his eyes, mouth to eyes, up and down, like flipping a light switch on and off repeatedly. When her lips actually met his, it was strange. She was too aware of them, the texture. Then, MJ was aware of herself, trembling. They broke the kiss.

Peter held her face again with both hands and she saw that his expression was calm, the way that his eyelashes flapped lightly with his eyelids half-lowered, brown eyes warm and deep, staring at her mouth. Before she could take a breath or think anything through, she kissed him again, quickly.

Heat burned through her, a match dropped in a trail of gasoline. MJ inhaled hard through her nose and pressed her mouth firmly to Peter's as he slid his hand to the back of her neck; his thumb dug in next to her spine and it felt really good, like a massage.

Tentatively, their tongues touched and retreated. Then, Peter surged forward like he knew what he was doing and, hell, she was convinced, finding his shoulders and grabbing on. Having someone's tongue in her mouth was decidedly more thrilling in practice than in theory. MJ felt her head tilting more to the side, rocking forward and back, as her lips moved with Peter's.

While the sand dipped and swished under her curling toes, his desire was her solid ground.

The second time they paused to breathe, MJ noticed she'd wrapped her arm over Peter's shoulder, and that his hand had caressed downward from her neck to her upper back.

"You wanna get out?" he panted. In the moonlight, she was caught up in counting the freckles on his nose; they'd darkened and multiplied since the decathlon team had arrived at the campground.

She could tell he was trying to figure out what the right thing was, so that he could do it. Typical Peter.

"No."

He raised hopeful eyebrows and MJ felt shy. Not because they were slowly circling, hands on each other in perfectly appropriate places (though on each other's naked bodies nonetheless), but because she was admitting, out loud, in one syllable, that she wanted him.

"I was right, wasn't I?" Peter checked, head inclined towards hers. "Water's not too cold."

"You better not be peeing, Parker," MJ threatened.

When he laughed in surprise, she threw her other arm behind his neck and pulled herself close to him with a smirk on her mouth.

The kiss was softer than she'd intended. That was because her legs had rubbed against his underwater. It wasn't just their knees bumping, which had been likely enough as they'd moved closer since they were both crouching slightly; the outer part of MJ's thigh brushed along the inside of Peter's. The side of her slim calf encountered the solid curve of muscle in his. It woke things in her, like the first spark catching on a crumpled piece of newspaper when Mr. Harrington finally got the campfire going after insisting he didn't need a lighter (and being shocked and disappointed when Flash had readily produced one and offered it up to hurry the process).

MJ could tell Peter felt it too―not just her _leg_, the awakening. Which was really a super clichéd and simplistic way to think about adolescent sexuality, particularly female sexuality, but yeah, it appeared that her relationship with her own passion was coming down to this. A moment with Peter Parker, floating between Venus and a shallow drop-off.

Peter's hand swept down her back as he released a shaky sigh; MJ felt as though she was waking up to find herself shuffling onto his lap, lifting her legs with sleepy slowness to hook them over his. They sank lower into the water together, chins briefly dipped.

"Hey, MJ," he murmured.

She bit her lip.

"Peter," she acknowledged.

This kiss was gentle on purpose, exploratory and calm enough to slide through the surface of their pooled attraction without a ripple. It didn't stir up anything more frantic, as her lips compressed steadily to his. Peter's hand was secure on the small of her back, her arms loosely around his shoulders. Their warm exhalations left the mildest currents in the air between them.

He began to play absently with her hair, collecting it with a hand that skimmed behind her shoulders, then closed in a circle like a slack elastic. MJ smiled against his mouth and felt the little dimples of muscle in his back when he moved his arm. Their tongues met again, but it was easy and in control. She thought about bobbing there all night with him and creeping to their tents when the sky turned a thin, pale grey.

Then Peter had to go and shift his hand, allowing cool water to touch the spot his palm had warmed on her lower back. Making her shiver.

MJ hadn't known that about him, that such a tiny reaction would cause him to respond like it'd been a seismic tremor, like she'd shaken the ground beneath his feet, but when she moved, he moved. His mouth surged against hers and he gathered her so close that her stomach was pressed up against his erection―her stomach and lower, legs splayed on his lap.

It was as sudden as an undertow and, fittingly, she didn't know which way was up. This, this had been lurking all that time she'd spent watching Peter, this had been waiting for her while she was waiting for him. MJ clung to it now (and to him) and couldn't believe she'd spared him even one second to point at the sky. He wanted to show her Venus? Too late. She'd found it for herself and, yeah, maybe it was more a Venus of the Greek goddess variety, but Peter didn't seem to be having any issue with that.

There was a wetness between them that wasn't just the lake. Though the water worked against it, Peter and MJ―foreheads bumping lightly as they closed their eyes and breathed hard―kept replenishing it, bodies grinding together out of sight below the dark, glassy surface. Her calves were tense as she hung on to him.

All the external rubbing made MJ's insides feel electric; maybe she was lighting up like a jellyfish, sonic blue. It certainly seemed to shock him when she drew in a demanding, shuddering breath and climaxed, hands clenching to fists behind his back, nails catching his skin.

"Oh my god," he said, and she opened her eyes to the pleading scrunch of his forehead. A pair of eyes like lucky pennies in a fountain. "Is it ok if I…?"

MJ smiled in satiated amusement and rocked her hips. The motion urged an oversensitive wiggle out of her, until Peter's hands held her fast, hugging her body to his. As his hips bucked, she instinctively nuzzled the side of her face into his and scooped up a handful of water. He groaned her name and she felt immortal.

Lifting her hand, she slowly tipped the water out onto the back of Peter's head. It rewet his hair and trickled along the back of his neck. MJ parted her arms to give it a path between his shoulder blades and in the meantime, Peter came. When his chin tucked over her shoulder, something hit her hard in the heart. She hugged him back fiercely.

And they floated.

In the end, MJ got out first while Peter sat with his back to her in the shallow water, arms on his bent knees. She threw on her clothes with her skin still wet (camp and the chance for a hot shower followed by dry pajamas were close), then he did the same while she faced their lake.

Their hands had never touched each other anywhere beyond those appropriate places, but their fingers linked as they climbed the dunes and they shared a shy, silent look over that little intimacy.


End file.
